Syrians Flee Another Town, Fearing Military Attack - NYTimes.com

Syrians Flee Another Town, Fearing Military Attack - NYTimes.com

Clipped from Article:

Civilians Flee Another Northern Syria Town, Fearing a Military Assault
By SEBNEM ARSU and LIAM STACK
Published: June 15, 2011

Recommend
Twitter
E-Mail
Print
Reprints
Share

GUVECCI, Turkey — Hundreds fled a town in northern Syria on Wednesday that appeared to be the next target of a military seeking to crush a three-month uprising against President Bashar al-Assad, activists said, joining thousands already displaced in a growing crisis that has embarrassed the Syrian government.

In a succession of often bloody operations, the Syrian military has sent tanks and soldiers to the country’s most restive areas. This week, forces were deployed to eastern Syria, a region that borders Iraq and is knit by extended clans, as well as the northern town, Ma’arrat an Nu’man, which is on the highway between Damascus, the capital, and Aleppo, Syria’s second largest city.

Though the Syrian military said its forces had yet to enter the town, activists said hundreds of residents, and perhaps more, had already begun heading to other Syrian cities and the Turkish border. Insan, a Syrian human rights group, said that security forces detained 17 people on Wednesday as they left the town, a historic site in Syria.

“The regime will go to any Syrian city and village that witnesses demonstrations,” said a 50-year-old farmer in Ma’arrat an Nu’man who gave his name as Jamal.

An activist there who gave his name as Samih added, “It is time to punish us.”

Forces also entered Dayr az Zawr in the east and surrounded the border town of Abu Kamal, where clashes have erupted between demonstrators and government loyalists. Despite the military’s presence, activists said a protest still took place in Dayr az Zawr, one of Syria’s largest cities, over the deployment of the army in the city.

In the past week, the crackdown — and fear of more violence at the hands of the government — has uprooted thousands of Syrians. Nearly 8,500 are in three camps across the border in Turkey, and thousands more are stranded on the Syrian side. Most of them were driven from Jisr al-Shoughour, which the government retook Sunday.

Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu of Turkey toured the border on Wednesday, even stopping at the barbed wire to greet displaced people on the Syrian side. In the camps on the Turkish side, officials have sought to bar journalists from entering, though some people occasionally moved to the blue plastic sheets stretched along the compound to speak.

“Damn your legislation, laws and the state you have established,” one woman shouted from the camp, denouncing the government of Mr. Assad. “Men’s fingers are cut off, and the wounded are piled on top of each other.”

About 4,000 children in the camp staged their own protest, which was quickly quieted by Turkish police officers guarding the compound. “People want freedom,” the children chanted.

After a deluge of Syrians fleeing across the border, traffic slowed to a trickle near the frontier town of Guvecci, as Turkish authorities sought to quickly relocate refugees to the formal camps. Ahmed Jumaa, a 25-year-old smuggler from the Syrian town of Ain al-Baida, said he had traveled to Guvecci daily to deliver food for displaced Syrians hiding near the border.

He said crossing the border had become “very dangerous” because of a sharp rise in the number of Turkish soldiers and border police officers. He worried that he would not make it back.

“All they did in Jisr al-Shoughour was have a peaceful protest, and now they are in the middle of so many problems,” he said, carrying bags of bread.

The Syrian government has sought to persuade Syrians to return to Jisr al-Shoughour, where armed groups, military defectors or a combination of both seized control of the town for a while earlier this month. Syrian officials say 120 members of the security forces were killed by “armed terrorist groups,” and on Wednesday, they showed journalists a grave they said contained several bodies. Reports of the events there remain murky, though an American official said this week that armed groups were involved.

Adnan Mahmoud, the Syrian information minister, said that electricity, water and communications had been restored to Jisr el-Shoughour and that the area was safe. The Associated Press, citing its reporter who traveled there on a government-organized trip, said vans packed with families and their belongings appeared to be returning residents to their homes, though other residents reached by phone said the town remained largely deserted.

“They are telling people to return, but I don’t trust them,” said a 34-year-old resident who fled Wednesday after hiding for three days. “How can I trust them?”

The state-run Anatolia news agency said an envoy sent by Mr. Assad, Hassan Turkmani, arrived in Turkey on Wednesday for talks with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey. Before the uprising, Turkey was one of Syria’s closest allies, but relations have badly deteriorated over a crackdown Mr. Erdogan denounced last week as savage.

Mr. Turkmani told reporters in Ankara, Turkey’s capital, that the Syrian refugees would be “hosted” in Turkey for a short while, the Anatolia news agency reported.

Mr. Davutoglu, the Turkish foreign minister, told reporters that he would convey his impressions of his trip to the border and his lengthy conversations with Syrians to Mr. Turkmani “in a friendly and frank manner.”

“There is a humanitarian situation,” Mr. Davutoglu said. “There are developments that concern us, and these concerns should be eliminated. What I observed is an established feeling of anxiety and fear. Everyone has to do his share in clearing out these feelings.”

In Damascus, thousands of government supporters lined one of the capital’s main thoroughfares and lifted a Syrian flag that stretched more than a mile. Waving pictures of the president, some shouted, “The people want Bashar al-Assad,” according to Syrian television.

Government news media, which covered the demonstration for hours, called it a show of national unity and “a rejection of foreign interference in Syrian internal affairs.”

Anthony Shadid and Hwaida Saad contributed reporting from Beirut, Lebanon